Game Balls - A review of the Bucs/Cowboys game

i think its very unfair that you single out raheem because he was the defensive backs coach of a tampa 2 scheme a year ago. guess what, hes a head coach now and he has to worry about the entire team. if you wanna blame someone, blame to front office for assembling tampa 2 safetys to try and play man… both safetys were single handly responsible for those blown plays. e-mack gets honorable mention for not wrapping up miles austin after he got the better of him, but jermaine still could have had the tackle if it wasnt for another horrible angle on the tackle. never thought i would miss t-jack so much. sabby just doesnt have the speed to play man and we need to get a young safety next year who can because i am done with sabby.

on to the d-line. i think we need to give a little credit to dallas people, they have absolute monsters up front. but overall i was very happy with our run defense until the end when it seemed like we gave up. the only time they were getting yards on us was when they were spreading us out in nickel situations and showing pass, and thats just very tough to stop against dallas. when they tried to cram in down our throats and show run, they were stuffed. that is a very good sign. i dont think our front 4 was as bad as people say, but our blitzing is just awful. barrett ruud should not blitz anymore. i was very dissapointed with gaines at first, but he started to get pressure. it seems like he was drained from the heat. jimmy wilkerson played very well at left end, but we need to STOP moving our lineman around so much. keep gaines on the right and keep wilkerson on the left end when we are in pass rush situations! when we tried to move wilkerson inside, put gaines on the left, and put stylez on the right it was EXTREMELY innefective. wilkerson is clearly the best pass rusher from the left side and it is stupid to take him out of his strength when what we are doing is innefective. the way the scheme is set up, were not going to get much pass rush from our DTs. i liked what i saw from wilkerson at LDE, but he needs to stay there. there is no other way to spin it, gaines has a huge responsibility because if he produces, our pass rush will be just fine. if he doesnt, your going to see a lot more big plays this year with the lack of speed in our secondary and lack of ability by the safetys to play man..

I didn’t really expect much though, i thought that the fact that we had 450 offensive yards against the Cowboys was great! Our running game is what i hoped it would be. If we can get what we got out of Leftwich week-in and week-out i will happy with it (until Freeman comes in and lights everyone up!!!) I wanted a better Defensive play (i’m sure everyone one else did) But the OLine for the Cowboys is good and so are the WR/TE, So against the Patriots, Cowboys, Steelers, GMen, (i would say eagles but a cracked rib to McNabb will cripple any team) we will have trouble with, but everyone else i can see us beating, especially if we can put up anything close to what we did today on the offensive end. All and all i thought we showed something and if Flip can return to form and the younger guys grow up a little we are right there with the rest of the NFC south.

Yeh, I think you homered a bit with Geno Hayes. Michael Clayton definitely deserved a game ball over Hayes. I still can’t get over how Sensabaugh leaped into him and fell hurt on the ground meanwhile Clayton kept on running.

I like Raheem and I would probably claim that the DB problem lies with Bates defense. If we look back to when Bates was with Denver then we would remember most of the complates came from poor DB play and they had Champ Bailey.
I wanted to give Bates a chance, but I think his defense is too old now. The league rules on DB/WR play pretty much prevent Bates to be able to work his scheme the way it needs to be done. You really cant expect a DB to play man and bump coverage or else your gonna get a lot of big plays against you.

Now it is Bates’ scheme, but it was Raheem who chose the man. I like how you brought up the point that the coach sticks usually sticks with the group he knows. I would also suggest that the coach sticks with the scheme he knows. This makes me ask as to why Raheem didn’t bring in a cover 2 guy or try to implement it some.

I was really hoping that he would bring in Bates and mold a new defensive look based on the two much like Tomlin did with the cover 2 and the 3-4 over in Pitt.

I agree with you on everything but your assessment of Raheem. I think that except for Rhonde and Jackson the talent level of our secondary is average at best. They were drafted to play in the Tampa2 and with the switch to the new DCs system they have more man repsonsibilites than zone or area coverages. I do think they will get better by next Sunday and by the end of the season they should be solid. Sabbi and Talib will need to step it up and earn their keep on this team. Good job with the break down. GO CADDY AND GO BUCS.

I was very encouraged by Leftwich. There were many times when the Cowboys were coming and he stepped up in the pocket and delivered a ball. Sometimes he missed and sometimes he hit, but Garcia would have run out of the pocket and dumped off a short pass. I am a Garcia fan, and one of Carmella’s too, but we have not seen passes going down field in a really long time. I am just saying that it was encouraging, and I think then coach made the right choice at QB. I believe Luke would have played like Garcia.